Energize Your Developers With A Hackathon

The clock is ticking down. A small team — a couple developers and a single designer — huddles around laptops, rushing to put the finishing touches on an application user interface. They haven't slept all night. As the morning light filters into the San Francisco event center, 25 teams work side by side to "hack" together new and innovative apps in a single weekend. This may not sound like your typical app development workflow — and that's the point. When done right, hackathons are an innovative proving ground for new ideas and a chance to position your organization as a technical leader by engaging in the social coding movement. Leading enterprises — including well-known brands like 7-Eleven, Home Depot, and Walgreens — are already joining the trend by hosting or sponsoring major hackathon events. Read this report to understand the movement, the business benefits, and the keys to hackathon success.